Elina Kilkku

Theatre director and playwright Elina Kilkku graduated as a Drama Instructor from Helsinki University of Applied Sciences in 2004 and, majoring in theatre research, she received her Master of Arts degree from the University of Helsinki in 2011. She has worked across Finland as a freelancer since 2002. From 2008 onward she has directed theatre in several historical genres, ancient texts as well as a series of directions concerning the modern deterioration of work life (Työelämä).

At the Saari Residence, Kilkku will be writing her newest play entitled Non Existere – Esitys katoavista asioista (“a performance about evanescent things”). In addition to discussing evanescent things, the performance investigates the limits of drama: some scenes are in prose and some writing exercises for the work groups involved in creating the performance. Kilkku is presently frustrated with psychological characters, cohesive plots, and accurate, descriptive parenthesis i.e. stage directions.

Drama text is thought to never be fully finished as it is only a script for a performance and so is completed only in the viewer. So why do drama texts so often seem to strive to be ready entities? Why can’t each director working with the text be trusted to choose the stage directions, or even the genre, most suitable to their needs? Why can’t a chronologically advancing play also be automatically performed backwards or in an arbitrary sequence of scenes? Imagine the revelatory glee of an actor who is presented with a text in which the directions are merely suggestions? Moreover, what exactly is the point of performing the exact same interpretation of a play in twenty different theatres? Interpretation is what happens to a drama text in rehearsals. Overly specific parentheses necessarily restrict the freedom of interpretation, which is what art is all about. Parentheses ought to be treated like the serving suggestions on food packaging.